


In the Eye of the Storm

by LSDAndKizuki



Category: The Beatles
Genre: 1966, 1980, M/M, Sailing, spiritual experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 16:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10700385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki
Summary: While sailing to Bermuda, John has a transformative experience.





	In the Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> This was quite heavily inspired by the 1980-centred episode of fabcast: "Coming up on borrowed time". 10/10 recommend listening to them, they have some wonderful thoughts. Hope you like my first contribution to the Mclennon archive!

The weather was just right for a seaside holiday. The stars guided him in a South-Easterly direction, which took him to the sparkling shores of Bermuda. His father was a sailor; he was born to be a sailor.

Of course, these were not really the reasons he took to the ocean on that sunny June day. The true reason was that the sea was the absolute opposite of everything he’d seen for the past five years: blank, featureless and fucking claustrophobic white walls now gave way to blank, featureless, never-ending water-surface.

“But it’s _not_ really blank,” John whispered, “That’s what’s so _great._ ” Because there were always things, terrifying beings lurking in the dark under-surface – it was blank in the way a facial expression may be blank, concealing a raging soul. There was no more soul in his white apartment than in an empty record sleeve. Yoko squeezed his arm, and wished him silently to be safe. John kissed her forehead in response, buzzing with the excitement of leaving, praying for an adventure.

When the adventure arrived, it landed squarely in John’s lap. It was a storybook tempest: a crack of thunder exploding like shells overhead, the monochrome strobe effect caused by the lightning. The yacht rolled sickeningly, taking John by surprise as he was rocked about along with it. Tyler Coneys was laid low by the storm; John watched his white and greenish face as he staggered below deck. His two cousins followed close behind. There was sickness rising in John too, but there was always a sickness inside. This was a different kind of sick, something closer to the amphetamine rush he got all those years ago in Hamburg. Damned if he was going to hide in the galley through this.

Grabbing the mast, he stayed up, and proudly relished the sprays from all sides. He screamed to the skipper over the roar, “nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

The skipper briefly looked back at him from the helm to reply, and John saw that he too was becoming affected by such heavy boat-lurching. John couldn’t resist a little scoff – and _he_ was the amateur here! “You got some balls, man,” the skipper yelled back, his cap flapping uselessly around his head, “this is the worst squall I’ve weathered in years. And Tyler’s a tough bastard, too.”

 _I’m tougher._ “You alright over there?” John headed towards him, and found himself catapulted to the helm with a particularly forceful buck. “Want me to take over?”

The skipper was clearly more than willing to hide his head in the cosy cabins, and John enjoyed watching his conflicted expression. “Well, that is, I mean… If you feel you can… Christ, your first sailing trip… I shouldn’t, I really… Go ahead.”

Any sounds that may have come from the skipper, or Coneys, or any other human other than the voice in his own head, were killed by the waves. John found that a prospect equal parts terrifying and fantastic. He was alone, truly alone. _Time to face the music._ The yacht bucked again, horribly, John’s hands found the cool metal of the helm, and he gripped with all of his might. “ _Way, haul away,”_ he began to sing, raucously and joyously, _“We’ll haul away Joe. The cook is in the galley, making duff so handy…”_ Here he was, the lowly cook, saving them from all from a storm only he could handle. He felt he had a right to be smug.

Fuck smug, he was on fire. He was soaking wet, but he felt completely alight, afraid to touch something lest it burn up in his presence. There was a groan from the yacht, a groan from the ocean. _“The captain’s in his cabin, drinking wine and brandy,”_ John sang to them. _“Away, haul away, we’ll haul away Joe!”_ The sky crackled, like something substantial, and suddenly John changed his tune to a wordless scream. He could not tell if it was a scream of euphoria or sheer terror, and this fact alone drew another yell from him. It was nearly lost in the wind, but he could hear it fine.

He continued to shout, and soon he realised he was shouting words after all: _come on, come on, come on._

John had always been a believer in the here and now, but never had his life seemed quite so here and now as this exact moment. These last years, particularly, he’d been drifting in an aimless, placeless stasis, and it was difficult to enjoy the moment when every moment was identical to the one preceding and the one following. Now, though – truly, _truly_ now – every potential sensation inside him was on its highest setting, and there was no sense of before or after. There was just _him,_ whoever he was, and the moment. And, he realised, without the slightest glimmer of fear, this was a life-or-death moment. He had started sailing with this very trip, and here he was trying to weather the worst storm Tyler’s crew had seen in years. It was a recipe for disaster.

Sod that. _Everything_ in his life until this point had been a recipe for disaster. He gripped the helm harder, and pulled it firmly to one direction. It was one-on-one now, Lennon versus Storm, and it was a fight he had no intention of losing. _Now that,_ he thought, rather gleefully in the midst of it all, _is what I call “Primal Scream.”_

He was still screaming, but now the words were different, they sounded more like _coming, coming, coming._ Well, this was certainly an orgasm, if that word meant anything real.

The word brought something into his head. A clanging guitar riff, fast and clever, and distorted voice singing the confident words, _you want a love that’ll last forever, one that will never fade away…_

“ _Paul!”_ John cried, delirious, “What’re _you_ doing here _,_ you little bastard?”

 _Coming up,_ Paul replied, cheekily and tunefully, _coming up, like a flower._

His hands loosened some. The storm was beating so hard on his ears, and Paul’s song was climbing up inside him, getting louder and louder, uncontrollably so, the dial on his internal amp ticking steadily up, and up, and up. He was not so much in the here and now anymore. Now more familiar feelings of the then and there, and the when and where, were beginning to creep in. Ah, friendly old doubt. How nice to see you. Do settle in.

Christ, what was he _doing?_ He didn’t know how to sail. He didn’t know how to write songs, he hadn’t done for years. He could barely look after a single beautiful child like Sean, what was he _thinking_ stepping out like this? His hands seized in horror on the helm. He could not move them. The sea seemed to laugh at him; he frantically remembered his battle with a surge of pride, then a surge of panic as he realised that this was no game, he could truly die here. But his hands, they still would not move. His mouth too was locked open in a silent cry, filling with salt and freshwater from the sky of blue and sea of green. What was he crying for? Was it help? Deliverance? It was certainly not joy, not anymore. Before he could examine the thought, a blinding flash of light assaulted him, and everything – the helm, the ocean, _Coming Up –_ disappeared.

There was a moment of blackness, and with it silence, but Paul’s words still seemed to shape the air, making it vibrate with frequencies too high for his hearing. _Coming up… Coming up… Up… Up… Get up… Get up, John!_

“Eh?” The pillow on which John’s head had been peacefully resting was yanked out and promptly used as weapon. John groaned as it smacked him upside the head, but still he did not open his eyes.

“Come on, you lazy arse, it’s past noon!” John opened his eyes, finally. The world was a mess of blurs, with a splash of black on white, which he imagined was Paul. He fumbled around for his glasses, had a split-second of panic when he did not feel them on the bedside, until smooth fingers slid them delicately up the bridge of his nose.

“Thanks.” He shook the sleep out of his head, blinked twice, and there he was: sitting in his Weybridge bedroom, with all of its useless trinkets cluttered about in perfect focus, and there was Paul, with a hand on one hip and a pillow in the other. A magazine pose, really. His eyebrow was quirked at John; John grinned back. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Getting you out of bed, clearly. Can’t have you snoozing all our precious time away. I want to show you something.”

“And here it is,” John smiled, “the great Paul McCartney’s newest masterpiece must have an audience, and all. It simply _can’t_ wait for next rehearsal session, can it?”

Paul scowled, but John felt none of its annoyance. After all, Paul had specifically felt the need to come to his house, on a weekend, just to show him his work. It was as normal an event as it had been five years ago; still it brightened the day up a little. “Asshole,” Paul said, in a perfect East-coast accent. _Who’s Kojack now?_ John suddenly found himself thinking. What a strange thought to have.

Paul’s hands had spirited up a guitar, and looking down with that irresistible concentrated-yet-effortless expression, he strummed a G, a healthy little chord. “To lead a better life,” he sang, “to B-minor, and then, interestingly, to B-flat, “I need my love to be here…”

It was a delicate, wistful tune, perfectly suited to Paul’s choirboy vocal cords. Like much of Paul’s work, though John had yet to tell him this, it was an eternal melody, one which seemed to have existed dormant in John’s mind already, until Paul had woken it up. It was painfully, shamefully good, and John felt two simultaneous pricks of pride and jealousy. The words were simple, and lovely. A love that was omnipresent and God-like – only rooted in the earth, hands in the hair, and all that. It sounded familiar to John. Even when Paul was not with him, he seemed to be, always here, there and everywhere. That was how he liked it. “It’s alright,” John told Paul.

Paul grinned at him, a completely sincere and proud smile, which caused John to crumble inside a little. “You love it.” A movement in the clouds outside caused the sun to stream hurriedly into the open room. It flushed Paul’s hair with brightness, and in that moment he became a figure burning with youthful potential, casual and elegant in his affluent talent, and of course John fell in love with him all over again. It was too unnerving a situation to address. John did not tend to waste time finding his female lovers beautiful, or mystical, in the way he found Paul. Their appeals were all ordinary, like the luxuries he now took for granted. Paul had something awe-inspiring mixed up in all that, which frightened him. “You written anything new?” He asked.

It was like a knife sliding into his back in another dimension. “Not for a few weeks, no.” _Not for a few_ years. _You knew that, Paul. Is it bad enough to torment me with your constant talent, now you have to remind me of my failures?_ Again, John was surprised by his own thoughts, sounding so bitter. He felt an uncomfortable nausea, as if the room were softly swinging in a breeze. He had not been _that_ drunk the night before, had he? “I’ve hit a lull.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ve been lazy, is all. Sleeping ‘til noon is hardly good song-writing form, is it?”

It was not an entirely genuine chide. But the words hit home, because he was right. Cooped up in these white walls and the baby – hang on, though, that wasn’t right. He closed his eyes. Clearly remnants of his dream had spilt into the day. “Maybe there’s a song in that,” he mused. “Sleeping through the day.”  

“There you go,” Paul said, “write that down, then.”

The doubt and nervousness that took hold of him at this point briefly starved him of words. Paul tilted his head at him. “I do try to write,” he murmured. “Really I do. I’ve thrown away more scraps of lyrics than I can count.”

Paul put down his guitar, and sat next to John on his bed. “Why’d’ya do that?” he asked. “You could just come to me with it. We haven’t worked on a bit together in ages…”

John shrugged. “It’s crap, that’s why. I don’t like writing stuff that’s no good.” _Since_ Yesterday _. Since you flowered into a genius, and I didn’t even realise._

“So what? It’s got to be better than nothing, hasn’t it?” He was looking earnestly at John now, his playfulness vanished. They were sitting close together, and their hands brushed as Paul lifted a finger to scratch the side of his nose.

“I don’t know about that.” John squeezed a patch of the bedclothes in his fist, and found that they had a strangely stiff quality. Metallic, almost. “It seems a lot of things might be better off if I didn’t do them at all.” His son for instance – no. His sons. “I don’t believe in meself.”

Paul seemed to be about to contradict this, but he stopped himself. “ _I_ believe in you,” he said finally. Then he smiled again. “Here, don’t get teary on me now.”

John wiped his face, though he was not sure it was wet with tears, or something else. “How could I lose you, Paul?” He’d take it all back, just for one more wake-up call like this. “I can’t do it without you.”

Paul’s hand was warm and solid, a splendid impossibility in the wet and biting wind. John leaned into the touch. “I never left. I’m still waiting for you.” Something John had not felt since the summer of 1964 began to simmer inside, something good.

“Don’t go now, then,” he gasped. “I’m coming.” And then Paul laughed, a windy laugh, full of the wide expanse of the oceans.

“Steer your boat, Johnny.”

The squall was still raging, and John was still alone at the front of the yacht, still facing it down. With aching friction, his hands turned the helm. His feet skidded in the pools of water between the planks, but the doubt was completely gone. He had duties to fulfil, and he was believed in.

When Hamilton harbour bobbed into sight a week later, John was called by Coneys from the galley, up to deck. He blinked in the sunlight. “We did it.”

“Yeah,” Coneys’ hands were relaxed and practised on the helm, a world away from John’s chaotic tactics. “You got us through the worst of it.” He whistled. “This is your first sailing trip, isn’t it? How d’ya like the wind in your face?”

“It’s great,” John replied. The wind was low now, and the yacht moved almost imperceptibly through clam waters. But the adventure was not over, not by a long shot. Going by his blood bubbling with words and music, and the itch in his fingers to strum them out, it was only just beginning. “We’ve all got to step out once in a while.”


End file.
